dovsdropConfusable pair

Which to use

“do” and “drop” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#2,819
“do” frequency rank
#16,859
“drop” frequency rank
19678
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature do drop
Definition Première note de la gamme. Coup de pied en demi-volée par lequel un joueur de rugby tente d’envoyer le ballon par-dessus la barre horizontale du but de l’équipe adverse.

Where the eye mixes do and drop

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

2 ch
do
4 ch
drop

Visual trap between do and drop

A purely visual mix-up. do (\do\) and drop (\dʁɔp\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19678, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

do is recorded at frequency rank #2,819, classified as anoun, pronounced \do\. drop is at rank #16,859, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dʁɔp\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 19678, this pair ranks #372,080 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of do vs drop

Shared letters: do. Private to "do": -. Private to "drop": pr.

"do" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "drop" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dropddrop · dorp · dropp · drpo · drrop · rdop

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "do" for "drop" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\do\ versus \dʁɔp\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "do" vs "drop" - which ranks higher?
"do" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,819 in our French list, against #16,859 for "drop". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "do" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "drop" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #372,080 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "do" and "drop" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dray vs drop". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #372,080 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list